Humanitarian Business
1. Auflage Januar 2013
200 Seiten, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
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With some 50 million people living under duress and threatened by
wars and disasters in 2012, the demand for relief worldwide has
reached unprecedented levels. Humanitarianism is now a
multi-billion dollar enterprise, and aid agencies are obliged to
respond to a range of economic forces in order to 'stay in
business'.
In his customarily hard-hitting analysis, Thomas G. Weiss offers
penetrating insights into the complexities and challenges of the
contemporary humanitarian marketplace. In addition to changing
political and military conditions that generate demand for aid,
private suppliers have changed too. Today's political economy
places aid agencies side-by-side with for-profit businesses,
including private military and security companies, in a marketplace
that also is linked to global trade networks in illicit arms,
natural resources, and drugs. This witch's brew is simmering
in the cauldron of wars that are often protracted and always costly
to civilians who are the very targets of violence. While
belligerents put a price-tag on access to victims, aid agencies
pursue branding in a competition for 'scarce' resources relative to
the staggering needs. As marketization encroaches on traditional
humanitarianism, it seems everything may have a priceÑfrom
access and principles, to moral authority and lives.
Abbreviations vii
About the Author ix
Foreword by Hugo Slim xi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
1 Responding to Humanitarian Demands 18
2 The Contemporary Landscape: Need and Greed 56
3 Coordination vs. Competition in an Unregulated Market 96
4 Market Distortions from Above and Below 123
5 The Push and Pull of Coming to the Rescue 143
6 What Next? 157
Notes 181
Suggested Reading 212
Index 218
an excellent introduction to modern humanitarianism."
Stephen Hopgood, School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London
"Thomas G. Weiss exposes the increasingly competitive nature of the
humanitarian world as well as the ways in which states and other
actors seek to manipulate emergency relief. An essential analysis
of the contemporary aid industry."
Jeff Crisp, Office of the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees
"Thomas G. Weiss has made an outstanding contribution to the
understanding and policymaking of humanitarian action for more than
twenty-five years. In this new book, he continues to do so by
challenging international humanitarians and their government donors
to think about their profession as a business."
Hugo Slim, Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict,
University of Oxford